Stadia
by Birdboy
Summary: The world has all sorts of fascinating places to hold a pokemon battle. A drabble collection based on Stadium Cards from the Pokemon TCG.
1. No Removal Gym

In the earliest era of pokemon battles, the hardest challenge for any trainer was finding the strength to attack. Disruption was the style of the age, and the dominant pokemon were creatures like Electabuzz and Hitmonchan – not because of their modest power, but because their attacks were simply too quick to block, no matter what items enemy trainers reached into their bags to grab. Many saw pokemon they had spent their lives training rendered useless by quick, repeated blows from tiny pokemon they could sweep away in a single strike – if only they could power up enough to do so.

One gym leader grew so frustrated with this strategy that he developed a strange machine which transformed his gym utterly. He did not outright block any items – if only because he could not figure out how - but the strange currents he added around the perimeter of the gym created an electric shock which disrupted any items which would drain a foe's pokemon. Although the removal items still worked, they zapped the user's fingers in the process, forcing the opposing trainer to throw away other items or pokeballs if they sought to drain his precious pokemon of their energy.

He had built the No Removal Gym out of bitter frustration, and expected the League to demand he take it down the moment they got word of it. He had never expected that the trainers of other pokemon which powered up as slowly as his Charizard would prefer his machine and flock to his gym for practice matches. And he was even more surprised when the league explicitly declared his gym – and other equally bizarre modifications - legal, leading to a continuous revolution in architectural design which shapes pokemon gyms to this day.


	2. The Rocket's Training Gym

Although infamous for their role in extortion, Team Rocket's pokemon are equally renowned by trainers for their aggressive, powerful attacks, which come at the cost of their ability to absorb damage. Accounts of the few police officers to raid their training camps and live to tell about it are in agreement with those of Team Rocket defectors that this is accomplished through use of a special gym to train new recruits and their pokemon.

The gyms which Team Rocket uses for training have been compared to fighting on a conveyor belt, for the ground and wind alike carry both pokemon inexorably towards the center of the battlefield. Dodging or blocking in these conditions is difficult, and outright fleeing exhausting, so trainers and their pokemon slowly learn that the best way to triumph is to face their opponents head on with brave, all-out assaults, and they bring this knowledge with them on missions outside their gym.

With a gang of Team Rocket Grunts beside them, any trainer can look strong, and even the biggest, toughest pokemon can be taken down in a combined assault – and Team Rocket Grunts, like thugs everywhere, prefer to fight outnumbered foes. When faced with opponents of equal number or equal skill, however, their fighting style proves a double-edged sword, and pokemon trained in Team Rocket's gyms often struggle to adapt to the more cautious technique dominant in the official Leagues. Most choose ultimately to embrace the strategies of the organization they rejected, for pokemon battles have a long history of going to whoever manages to strike first, and Rocket Grunts are trained for speed – at least when going forward!


	3. Celadon City Gym

Erika, the leader of Celadon City Gym, specializes in grass pokemon, but she is more commonly described as a master of status. Not only do her pokemon leave their foes asleep, confused, paralyzed, or poisoned - often for virtually the whole of the match – but any attempts to beat her at her own game quickly falter, as her pokemon swiftly shed leaves or vines and with them disrupting conditions.

Some have described the mysterious ability of Erika's pokemon as cheating – an accusation which greatly disturbed a gym leader so devoted to fair play she would seldom reach into her bag to grab items without giving her foe a chance to do the same, even if it **was** still her turn. But there is a sense in which they are right. Her pokemon, grown in the greenhouses of Celadon Gym, had somehow managed to evolve an ability which could protect them from their sparring partners at the cost of their own energy, but which only worked in a single battlefield. Others simply consider it a specialized breeding program, albeit one so localized it would be of little use outside a single stadium; the Indigo League, which expects gym leaders to create unique challenges through terrain advantages in their own gyms, dismissed this as the complaint of sore losers - but Erika herself was disturbed by the accusation.

Although members of the unique floral lineage native to Celadon City Gym are usually described as Erika's pokemon, Erika and her attendants are avid horticulturalists who raise more than they could possibly use in battle. Challengers today are offered Bellsprout, Oddish, and other spare pokemon when they enter the gym for the duration of the match, and many choose to adopt and continue training them long after winning the Rainbow Badge.


	4. Cerulean City Gym

It is said that the hardest thing about winning the Cascade Badge is catching Misty's pokemon before they swim away. The Cerulean City Gym looks from the outside like an ordinary pool, but Misty's pokemon have learned to manipulate the gym's many water jets to flee in a hurry when wounded; even her larger pokemon, such as Cloyster and Gyarados, find retreating in the gym less tiring than when fleeing in an ordinary pond.

Opposing trainers have often sought to copy Misty's strategy, only to find that the jets all blow to her side of the pool and are useless if they want to swim away. A few injured pokemon crash headfirst into the pool's and faint in the process; a few more try to launch themselves towards Misty's bench, but find their way blocked by her active pokemon. Most, upon learning the jets are useless to their pokemon, simply give up on exploiting them, often at the expense of victory.

Simply retreating from the battlefield, however, is far from sufficient to guarantee a pokemon's safety. The trainers who defeat Misty are those who do not let her use the edge of Cerulean's pool as a hiding place for her pokemon, either forcing them out with wind or striking them from a distance. A bench full of wounded pokemon can be a source of immense frustation, or it can be a perfect trap laid on themselves by a hit-and-run pokemon trainer; the Cascade Badge is given to those clever enough to detect and exploit the difference.


	5. Pewter City Gym

Flying pokemon have long soared high above the ground, frustrating fighting pokemon everywhere – both those made of rocks like Brock's favorites, and those more inclined to battle by punching their foes or striking the earth. Brock was frustrated by losses to trainer after trainer who caught local birds and Scyther no matter what tricks he pulled, in matches where Ninetales was the only pokemon to seriously damage his foes – and it wasn't enough.

When the Indigo League legalized custom stadia, Brock decided to remodel the Pewter City Gym to force flying pokemon to the ground. Most gym leaders would have accomplished this by lowering the ceiling, and he did this to a degree, but his own Onix made this a difficult choice; make the gym too low and birds might not be able to fly above fighting attacks, but his own star pokemon would hit its head repeatedly on the roof. Instead, Brock chose to control the air in his gym through light.

The lights of Pewter City Gym shine down from the roof of the battlefield, distorting the appearances of rocks below while dazzling any birds which try to fly out of the way. They can move through the air as well as ever, but it is no longer an advantage; those who seek the Boulder Badge can not strike Brock's pokemon from high in the sky, but must prove they can take his fighting pokemon on equal terms and win without any special resistances. Trainers who seek to build a new team to challenge Brock now stock up on grass, water, and psychic pokemon, but the diversity needed to confront all of Brock's pokemon – and his own special methods of training and protection – makes any battle in the remodeled Pewter City Gym a genuine test of skill.


	6. Vermilion City Gym

The majority of Kanto Gyms in some way, whether intentionally or unintentionally, give the gym leader an advantage. Lt. Surge felt no need for any advantage, and when the Indigo League abolished its restrictions on custom gyms, Surge felt no need to remodel Vermilion's whatsoever. But Lt. Surge had neglected to inspect the gym's wiring, which faced an ordinate amount of voltage as a result of hosting repeated battles with electric pokemon.

In a match where a thunderstorm raged from _outside_ the arena, Vermilion's lights failed, but the challenger, with a boat ticket for Fuschia the next day, insisted it continue on. The surging electricity poured through the gym leader's pokemon – at times strengthening their attacks, but at times recoiling against the user.

Lt. Surge had long felt that, victory and defeat alike, his matches had grown dull and stale – and that adding a bit more of an element of chance would make battles at the Vermilion Gym far more exciting! The wires would be repaired to eliminate any danger to spectators or lights and rerouted through the floor, but his electric pokemon were instructed to stand on certain spots in the gym should they need a little extra power; should that power backfire, well, his matches were getting far too easy anyway.

Challengers to the Vermilion City Gym often try in vain to map the wires underfoot, especially if they choose to fight Lt. Surge with electric pokemon of their own. Those who defeat him are those who accept that the good Liutenant's power surges are his alone, and manage to manuever him into a position where a failed surge will knock out his pokemon – and while every pokemon battle involves some degree of luck, nearly all those where a Thunderbadge is awarded see it in the challenger's favor.


	7. Narrow Gym

In the earliest days of the sport of pokemon battles, neither arena sizes nor rules had been standardized. The format of today, with six pokemon in play at a time and six knockouts sufficient to claim a victory, coexisted with matches won by first knockout, matches with no bench, and matches won only once exhausting all the opponent's pokemon and items, where only the bag size was subject to any rules.

The Narrow Gym is the oldest surviving Pokemon stadium, and was built by its promoters to accommodate a wide variety of battles, but in a city block insufficiently wide to host the six on six matches which eventually triumphed over other rulesets. However, it was beloved by the locals and prized worldwide for its history, so the League chose to grandfather in its insufficient dimensions. Over a century worth of challengers have found the Narrow Gym a daunting place for matches, and generations were frustrated by gym leaders, local trainers, and their strategies based around a mere five pokemon.

Gym Leaders and assistant trainers from the Narrow Gym have, despite the immense local popularity of the sport, at times struggled with Kanto-wide tournaments and their greater number of allowable benched pokemon. Before the Indigo Plateau, they could have the last laugh about once a decade, when their unique gym gave them an extreme home-field advantage. In the modern era, gyms are reduced to hosting badge battles from their historical role as home stadiums, and with the easing of the Pokemon League's stadia rules the Narrow Gym is simply one of many challenges on the road to becoming a pokemon master. It is far from the most daunting, but it is the one where challengers, win or lose, are the most likely to stick around to tour the gym afterwards.


	8. Chaos Gym

There are many who dislike the way the pokemon battles of this era emphasize items, for they feel matches become not a contest of strength, but of who can reach into their bag and pull out what they need the quickest. There are others who came to Celadon City and its Game Corner for the thrill of gambling, and were simply intrigued by the idea of a pokemon battle different from anything they ever knew, and who loved to bet on other matches while waiting their turn.

They assemble at the Chaos Gym, where items thrown into the arena work as intended only if they land on a black square; on a red one, the opponent can instead use the item as their own. Most trainers treat the battle as a fun excursion, using the same strategies as they normally would, but seeking comfort in the notion that their opponent, no matter how good a trainer, is in just as over their head.

But there are a few trainers – some locals, some casino employees – who simply prefer the competition in the Chaos Gym to any other type of pokemon battle. They fill their bags with items which do the same thing whichever trainer uses their effect or backfire outside very specific situations, or they stock up on pokemon with interesting powers at the expense of carrying almost zero items in their bag.

The secretive, allegedly criminal owners of the Celadon Game Corner have been accused of sneaking them into the crowd for matches when they want some extra gambling winnings – but they seldom need to, for the tournaments between skilled Chaos Gym trainers, booked well in advance, are their casino's biggest draws of all.


	9. Resistance Gym

Resistance in the modern era of pokemon battles is at worst a mild annoyance, so it is difficult even for historians of the game to truly appreciate just how much trouble it gave lightning, colorless, psychic, and fighting pokemon in times of old, and why so many of their trainers chose to band together to build the Resistance Gym. And to be fair, the Resistance Gym was mocked even before it opened as a stadium for trainers who could not overcome their pokemon's immunities. But anyone who has watched film of the farce that is a Gastly fighting a Meowth (or, for that matter, a Gengar fighting a Persian) in that era would find it easy to sympathize.

The Resistance Gym still stands today, although it is rarely used for actual battles. It is known far and wide as a marvel of engineering, whose laser-like lights distorted birds' perception of the ground and illuminated ghosts. The raised platorm prevented fighting pokemon from insulating themselves against electric shocks, while the triangular shape and the building's orientation allowed psychic waves to penetrate the typically opaque minds of normal pokemon. In its era, the battles fought there saw a great deal more electric, fighting, and colorless pokemon than the outside world – but more than a few trainers of other types, attracted by the surprising number of upsets, often in battles which seemed impossible on an ordinary battlefield.

Ironically, although ridiculed at the time, and often in today's textbooks, the Resistance Gym hasin a way been favored by the verdict of history. As pokemon have grown stronger, they have trained at exploiting their immunities less, and the modern game resembles the battles in the ancient Resistance Gym far more than those in any other stadium.


	10. Cinnabar City Gym

Water pokemon with sufficiently low internal temperatures represent an unusual variant from their aquatic counterparts; they need no longer fear grass or electric pokemon, and they attack with snow or solid ice. While water evaporates at high temperatures just as it freezes at low ones, anyone looking for a steam counterpart to the ice variant of water pokemon will find them absent in nature – but plentiful at the Cinnabar City Gym.

The Cinnabar City Gym's name has always been something of a misnomer; an enthusiastic Blaine chose it in emulation of the Indigo League's other gyms, but Cinnabar Island's population never grew large enough to be called a true city, even before the eruption. But the volcano who kept settlers away from Cinnabar also gave its gym its unique character; a platform inside suspended over lava, in heat so intense any water attack would swiftly turn into steam.

One should not mistake this heat for a shield; the attacks of battles in the Cinnabar Gym were as fierce as they were unorthodox. Water pokemon quickly adapted to the inferno's conditions and began to spit their steam like the fire pokemon they fought there, although once their waves turned into a vapor, they no longer had any special ability to douse their enemies' flames. The Volcano Badge would not be easy for water pokemon trainers to win, but nor would it be easy for anyone else; the old hermit of the volcano is an elite pokemon trainer whose spirit burns hotter than his pokemon!


	11. Fuchsia City Gym

The Fuchsia City Gym is riddled with invisible walls and trapdoors, which have been built up over the years from its long history as a ninja stronghold – and rearranged or added to whenever there was a suspected leak of its layout – whether from capture, torture, or simply defection to an enemy daimyo. The age of human ninjas needing to use their skills in combat here has long since passed, but the ninja pokemon of the gym – trained by a man known to most only as Koga, the name of the clan he heads – have carried on this centuries-old tradition in pokemon battles.

Koga's pokemon are drilled not only in the use of the clan's immense catalog of poisons, but also in the gym's own layout, which they use to disappear from the battlefield entirely when badly wounded, denying their foes a precious knockout. An elaborate network of tunnels under the gym leads these pokemon back to their own pokeball in Koga's bag, from which they emerge, fully rejuvenated, to rejoin the match – if it lasts long enough.

Although few of Koga's pokemon hit hard with their own attacks, they still challenge trainers through their disappearing act and the slow attrition of their foes from poison. His clever techniques drive many opponents to extreme frustration, but Koga has little answer for raw power; those who earn the Soul Badge are typically those who train their pokemon to hit hard enough to knock out their foes before they have a chance to exploit their ninjutsu. Challengers should note that the trapdoors do not cover all the Fuchsia City Gym, and the invisible walls can at times stall Koga's pokemon as well as their own; some trainers defeat Kanto's top shinobi through accidental positioning and simple luck.


	12. Rocket's Minefield Gym

The surest sign that Team Rocket is up to something big and too blatant to hide behind the facade of a legitimate business is the sudden, unexplained appearance of mines around the perimeter of an area. Team Rocket's Minefields are not particularly deadly on their own – the pitiful explosions can not knock out even a Magikarp – but between the mild injury and the warnings from patrolling rocket Grunts, they are sufficient to make most locals stay away from any trouble.

Police forces and self-proclaimed heroes soon learn that the battlefield's mines are only activated by the summoning of a pokemon, or an attempt to walk across without doing so – and that avoiding the mines has more to do with luck than memorizing their placement; Team Rocket's pokemon, although rarely startled, are by no means immune from injury. One should note that outside viewers believe that the use of mines is controversial even within Team Rocket's upper echelons; its continued use in spite of injuries to Rocket pokemon is attributed alternately to cost-cutting to cover all of Team Rocket's geographically dispersed projects, or Giovanni's sense of fair play.

Nor should one forget that Team Rocket is also known for their extremely offensively-minded pokemon, and a little bit of extra damage can make their foes' stars every bit as fragile. And those Rockets assigned to frequent guard duty soon learn which pokemon can snipe wounded foes on their enemies' bench, or which of their own fight harder when wounded – or sometimes, how to make their foes summon their pokemon again and again until the mines activate. To these Grunts, the Rocket's Minefield becomes a high-stakes, open-air gym, which they have mastered every bit as much as any gym leader.


	13. Saffron City Gym

An ideal pokemon battle sees fully powered pokemon trade blows every turn, but most matches fall far short of the ideal. Trainers search constantly for ways to quickly power up their pokemon lest they be left a sitting duck, sometimes sacrificing the one fighting for a stronger benched ally – while sparing no effort to disrupt their foes' ability to do likewise. Ensuring that the right pokemon gets the energy they supply, and that their supply doesn't run out, is a key component of strategy and can mark the difference between winning and losing for every trainer outside Saffron City Gym.

Sabrina has a renowned reputation as a magician, and her gym is her favorite stage. Although Sabrina has many tricks she uses to win pokemon battles - most notably the piercing gaze which makes her opponents unwittingly drop their items into their bag and take out the same number of new ones while she does likewise - her most remarkable tactic can only be performed within her gym.

Saffron City Gym's purple, psywave-shaped ceiling functions allows Sabrina's pokemon to return any extra energy to their trainer like a miniature psychic Venusaur. The energy which returns to Sabrina's hand soon finds its way onto her other pokemon – or back to where it came from after some quick help from a miniature pokemon center - and her nearly constant assault creates far too close and fast-paced a match for her challengers for them to waste time trying to decipher magic tricks. The secret of Saffron City Gym has yet to be deciphered – but then again, psychics, pokemon and human alike, have long flourished in the gap between humanity and our understanding of the world.


	14. Viridian City Gym

Evolution has always meant two distinct but related things when concerning pokemon – the change of species over generations and the metamorphoses they undergo in their own lifetime – and both are meant to increase their ability to survive. In the ancient battlegrounds of Viridian City, evolution not only makes local pokemon bigger and stronger, but heals away their wounds.

Giovanni, the Viridian City Gym Leader, has never been fond of resurrecting fossils; any pokemon weak enough to go extinct, in his mind, are too weak to be worth training. But the pokemon Giovanni does use are an atavistic throwback to many periods in prehistory; his Nidoking dates from the Eocene, his Gyarados the Cretaceous, his Kangaskhan the Oligocene – and these ancient species have long lived in symbiosis with the rocks that form the base of Viridian City. The Viridian City Gym in particular is built from the town's oldest and finest bedrock, which has long been infused with a mysterious effect that rewarded its natives for evolution.

In principle, any trainer willing to raise lineages of pokemon whose ancestors have called what is now Viridian City home for millions of years can go toe to toe with Giovanni and heal them with evolution. In practice, of course, most challengers do no such thing, ignore the careful efforts and mysterious funding sources which Giovanni used to build his remarkable team, and lose with a strategy that has not evolved at all; more often than not, neither have their pokemon. Winning the Earth Badge requires more than picking off slow and unevolved pokemon, knowing their injuries will still cripple them after evolution – but pokemon do not survive in one place for millions of years by being weak!


	15. Ecogym

Although pokemon have long used their special powers to hunt prey or protect themselves from predators, or served beside their trainers in war, the modern sport of pokemon battles consumes their energy on a much greater scale. A wild Typhlosion would be unlucky if it needed to Flame Wheel to protect itself from predators or kill particularly resistant prey once every week, and one serving in Johto's armies would spend weeks marching or besieging before a day attacking constantly in battle. A trained Typhlosion, however, might attack multiple times a match, and can easily participate in a dozen matches on a single day; their trainer's chief task is providing them the energy they need to strike.

The cumulative effect of pokemon battles at a scale unparalleled in history on the world's energy supplies is destructive enough, but trainers made battles even more wasteful once they realized that the easiest way to win a match is to deny their foes the chance to strike. Many environmentalists were disturbed by this trend, and a few, rather than protesting the sport as inhumane, designed a concept gym as an alternative.

The Ecogym has been compared to fighting in a greenhouse, and its dome shape recaptures most basic powerups used in battle, letting trainers reuse them at will. Critics have claimed the energy needed to run the gym must exceed that spent in the battle, lest it violate thermodynamics, but whether they have found a mysterious, impossible design or their critics misunderstand pokemon physics, battles in the Ecogym waste far less energy than those in other stadia or the great outdoors. Sadly, despite the prototype in Johto, the idea has not caught on among trainers around the world – few of whom came away from the Ecogym impressed with their match.


	16. Sprout Tower

The monks of Sprout Tower have long dealt with attacks from area pokemon, large and small – from the Noctowl flying into the windows to the occasional hordes of Wigglytuff assailing the ramparts. Their own Bellsprout or Victreebel were rarely up to the task of repelling them; when bandits came to loot the tower's treasures, there was little they could do but pray. Material things, however, are impermanent, and an ascetic need not be bothered too much by aggressive wild pokemon; heretical sects (or, a less sympathetic reader might argue, simple rivals) are a far greater danger to their enlightenment – and they had Dragonite and Wigglytuff of their own.

A panicked monastery spared no effort in immediate research to prepare the best defenses, purchasing countless texts from Violet City and what was left of Alph in hope of finding some way to fight back. What they read was that colorless pokemon are remarkably dependent on physical attacks to damage their foes – whether they use teeth, claws, or wings – and can be easily beaten if their sense of position is disrupted. Another text taught the monks how to rebuild the tower's central pillar in order to give the building a gentle sway. For its residents, accustomed to constant meditation, the change was a mild one; a mere week after rebuilding Sprout Tower, they had ceased to even notice the motion.

But when the invasion came, the heretics' pokemon were stymied; they constantly adjusted their positions, yet never quite landed a direct hit. The monks' Victreebel, however, perfectly commanded the elements to a victory so miraculous that their foes allegedly converted on the spot. Four hundred years later, it is clear that whatever text the monks taught the monks to adjust the pillar was perfect; Sprout Tower still stands, and it still sways!


	17. Healing Field

Some say that the Healing Field is a Chansey burial ground, and its mysterious powers represent the determination of those buried there to wipe away the wounds suffered by others, even after death. Others say the magic is imbued in the ground, either from the blood of those Chansey – or, for those who reject that explanation, because of a high concentration of potion ingredients in the groundwater and soil.

But this mystery is one chiefly for scientists; for many of the wild pokemon who made their way to the Healing Field from across Johto, and the few trainers whose pokemon are too injured for a Pokemon Center to save them, what matters is that it can make the pain fade away. A long nap in the healing field can cure a pokemon's most dire injuries, and any pokemon who make it there can consider themselves restored to full strength, although many wild pokemon succumb to their wounds before they can arrive.

It is possible, if one really must, to hold a pokemon battle in the Healing Field, but it's hard to see why anyone would bother, apart from the occasional pairs of trainers who fail to realize they had entered its grassy, tree-lined, and visually unremarkable boundaries. The healing field heals slower than two evolved pokemon or non-evolving basics can wound each other – yet apart from the fact that any combat there defiles a place of sanctuary, the field also heals more than enough to make any battle a frustrating slog.


	18. Rocket's Hideout

When fighting virtually anywhere in the world, Team Rocket's pokemon are known for their fragility, but those few police officers and self-proclaimed heroes who challenge them in their own hideout unanimously report that they fall no more easily than any other pokemon of their species. The question which has for so long vexed law enforcement is "why?"

A few individuals have discounted prior reports outright, but the few who thought to test them (and survived) only wound up embarassedly revising their analysis. Others speculate the divergence is the result of experiments carried out in the Rocket's Hideout, which leave resident pokemon damaged outside its specific conditions – but the same issue stymies pokemon owned by Team Rocket agents from far afield who are unlikely to have ever visited headquarters, and the fragility of Rocket pokemon is typically explained by the aggressive fighting styles honed in their various Training Gyms and not the central hideout.

The most plausible explanation comes from a few wistful, nostalgic Rocket defectors, although it is also implied if not perfectly corroborated by the interviews of Rocket executives to the press. Giovanni did not merely build the Rocket's Hideout as a base; he treats his crime family as something akin to a real one, and any proper family deserves a house of its own – even if this house is more like a compound. Team Rocket's pokemon are fighting in a place they are comfortable, and push themselves harder before fainting – because as much as taking down their hideout would protecting the rest of Kanto and increasingly Johto for extortion, the pokemon and trainers fighting to defend it are merely defending their home.


	19. Broken Ground Gym

Built into the mountainous cliffs of Johto is a battlefield with terrain so rough and rocky, it nearly requires evolution to cross. Baby and basic pokemon are far too small to climb the rocks without serious exertion; even those few unevolved pokemon large enough that they should be theoretically capable, such as Snorlax and Hitmonchan, nonetheless find it extremely difficult to maneuver past the broken ground.

Evolving pokemon often find it hard to compete with their basic counterparts; even if they exceed them in power, they can not sustain their new forms for long. Worse, they must evolve once again in every match – or more than once, should they require a second stage or confront a Mew. Few of them can escape battles easily, rocks or no rocks, and those few tend not to have the awesome power when fully evolved that justifies using them to prospective trainers.

The Broken Ground Gym began as a place for evolving pokemon to fight among themselves, while making it harder for pokemon such as Scyther and Sneasel (both of which, ironically, have mastered evolution since its founding) who fight with powerful, speedy strikes and answer foes they can not immediately crush by running away. In time, some basic pokemon began to join them, because they too thought of escape as cowardice and desired a straightforward fight more than they themselves wanted to flee – while all looked up in annoyance at the large evolved birds who soared to the bench anyway.

It would be many years until trainers followed their pokemon to the Broken Ground Gym, for the climb there is inaccessible, and the proud locals still accept no human leader – but even Scyther trainers show up, because humans will go anywhere for the sake of a challenge!


	20. Radio Tower

For the pokemon competing in them, battles are a fairly orderly affair – they take their turns getting powered up, use what abilities they have, and trade blows. For their trainers, it is barely organized chaos. Whether they use large pockets like the traditionalists for whom the sport was named, or carry bags like most modern trainers to hold their pokemon and items, trainers constantly try desperately to find whatever will help their pokemon at any particular stage of a battle. Indeed, a lot of the items they bring are there only to help them go through their bag better than reaching blindly, as required by the sport's rules, allows.

At first, Radio Tower battles were little more than a trick to gain an unfair advantage; local trainers had begun to realize that the static in the area sounded slightly different depending on what was on top of their bag, and trained their ears to hear it to a remarkable, nearly inhuman level. But one bored Radio Tower employee watched the battles from his window and set up radio imaging so he could "see" the top two items in both bags. When his boss found out, she saw a business opportunity in renting out two-way radios, then having him use them to read off said items to the trainers fighting beneath the tower.

Matches held in Johto's Goldenrod City in the shadow of the Radio Tower do not eliminate the chaotic nature of pokemon battles. All they do is add a small dose of predictability to the chaos, but it is enough to make the surrounding streets in Goldenrod as popular among travelers as the city's official gym. Knowing their top two items, after all, requires new strategies - often based on knocking them back further into their own bag!


	21. Energy Stadium

The energy which pokemon require to continuously attack in battles typically comes from powerups provided by their trainers, for only a few, such as Typhlosion, can produce it on their own. These powerups have historically produced in a variety of ways, depending on a pokemon's type; those seeking to manufacture lightning energy once chased thunderstorms, while those who wanted grass need merely gather it from a forest. But the burden on trainers was great and the reward insufficient, and only the nobility tried.

The modern, industrialized era of pokemon battles required the discovery of a few locations in the world where every type of energy could be found – bountiful mines where the air and ground alike are rife with power, and where anyone capable of braving the dangers to harvest it would return home with riches. The mining towns were not particularly exciting places, nor are they today – the businesses which normally spring up after gold rushes saw little profit in such a remote and unsafe location – but, just like everywhere else, they were full of pokemon trainers who would seldom resist the chance for pickup battles in their downtime.

What they discovered in these battles was that their pokemon never ran out of energy; if anyone used a powerup, it would as often as not be completely refilled the moment they dropped it, and if pokemon ever struggled to attack it was only because they couldn't strengthen them fast enough. Some considered the matches in the Energy Stadium a poor facsimile of the ones closer to home, where energy is a scarce resource which must be carefully controlled and never exhausted – but lacking anything better to do, they fought on anyway. Others, however, loved the thought of pokemon matches where they would never experience an energy drought.


	22. Lucky Stadium

Tucked away behind Goldenrod's game corner is a small but popular stadium, where trainers bet on pokemon battles that go even faster than the norm. Most battles there are fought by robots, whose commands are inputted based on the mass of button-mashing trainers who wagered on one or the other based on their teams at the start of the match. Of course, even skilled trainers differ in their preferred strategies, and the robots were as likely to listen to casual fans with no clue what they were doing as they were to listen to skilled trainers – so upsets were plenty, and the difference between victory and defeat was more often than not a matter of luck.

Faced with a mass of conflicting commands, the robots at the Lucky Stadium often attempted to carry them all out at once, and began in the process to malfunction. A few matches were interrupted as their pokemon looked on in confusion, or tried to execute impossible moves – a few more marred by allegations of cheating, as the robots, trying to do everything at once, seemed half the time to pull items from their bags faster than any human could possibly manage – but despite a few who placed high bets fuming after losses, the malfunctions made the robot matches more popular than ever.

Individual trainers rarely bother to battle the robots, and the few challengers to enter the Lucky Stadium learned the easy way that the wisdom of one person can greatly exceed the wisdom of crowds. They did report, however, that they, too, found it as easy as the robots to take extra items; the secret of the Lucky Stadium today comes not from malfunctioning robots, but from equipment every bit as convienent – and illegal – when placed in human hands.

(with thanks to twitchplayspokemon and the /vpwritethread/ chat for the idea)


	23. Apricorn Forest

Although there are many types of pokemon – seven known at the beginnings of the sport's recorded history, eleven known today – it is rare for a trainer to use more than one in a fight. If they do, it is typical that the differently typed pokemon will be used only for a special effect or an attack which requires little energy, for the difficulty of powering up different types of pokemon at a time is a significant burden on even the greatest trainers.

Perhaps, however, this fact is only an unfortunate artifact of the modern game – because before the modern pokeball was invented, pokemon in Johto were typically sealed in apricorns. And the Apricorn Forest, where a narrow majority of the world's apricorn supply is grown, is renowned for the willingness of its residents to train rainbows worth of pokemon – and even more remarkably, to triumph with them on home turf.

The different colors of various apricorns have typically been compared to specialized types of pokeballs, but an old tradition notes their resemblance in color to six of the known pokemon types. And apricorns can power pokemon up as easily as they can hold them; in the Apricorn Forest, they do both, for they summon the right kind of pokemon to the bench as quickly as they provide them with the energy they need.

Perhaps if we had not relegated apricorns to an antique curiosity of rural Johto, trainers today would fight with far more diverse teams, using rainbows of pokemon without the presence of an Aromatisse. But one should also note that, given the labor intensive process inherent in turning these fruits into pokemon homes, trainers in a world without the pokeball and its descendants would be exclusively aristocrats.


	24. Pokemon Park

While the powerups which trainers give their pokemon are typically described as energizing them, this refers only to their ability to fight; healing one's pokemon requires a different sort of energy, and many offensive-minded trainers don't bother. But energy in the conventional sense of the word implies not only power, but recovery from wounds and fatigue – and when pokemon play among themselves, it becomes clear just how distant the modern game is from its antecedents. (Provided, of course, that one holds the view that pokemon battles are scaled-up play-fighting, not a hunt with the deaths removed.)

There are, however, a few parks in Johto built not for elite competition, but for pokemon to play. They are frequented by children and casual trainers who raise cute pokemon that they see primarily as pets, most of whom remain relatively weak after evolution – and even those with potential rarely find their trainers skilled or knowledgeable enough to bring it out.

The Pokemon Parks of Johto, despite the low skill level typically on display, retain a keen interest from aficionados of the sport for two reasons. The first is that some of the children who play there are genuine prodigies who win match after match by dominant margins, and win tournaments against far more serious opponents as they age; if one looks at the biographies of Champions, they will often find their beginnings in a Pokemon Park. The second is that pokemon in the parks heal in the process of powering up, a fact which many consider a throwback to earlier, less formalized eras of the game – and which, despite the relatively low skill level on display, still makes for long and exciting battles.


	25. Undersea Ruins

When archaeologists discovered the Undersea Ruins, they were left extremely puzzled by the fact that the reliefs and sculptures contained virtually no evolved pokemon. Trainers were depicted in art with evolving pokemon like Marill and Remoraid, and a vast plaza in the city center surrounded by stands was difficult to interpret as anything other than a pokemon arena, yet neither artwork nor biological signatures left any evidence that the people who built the ruins had ever encountered evolved pokemon at all.

Faced with a puzzling mystery which had vexed the scientific establishment for years, a group of experimental archaeologists won permission to attempt a very careful battle in the wreckage of the stadium, with a pokemon list carefully vetted to not damage structures which had stood for 100 years. Both found their pokemon capable of evolving, but they visibly struggled to maintain their shape. One of the participants found the battlefield frustrating, regretted his choice of pokemon until he was reminded this was not an actual match, and wondered why trainers would ever use evolving pokemon here when so many strong basic pokemon could be found in the vicinity. The other, an ex-Rocket with a Dark Slowbro, exploited effects caused by evolution again and again in order to win the match.

It was argued not long after the experiment that some of the art depicting Slowpoke with Shellder in the ruins was actually intended to depict Slowbro, and some Grimer were likewise reinterpreted as Muk. For while evolution was not unknown in the Undersea Ruins, it rarely lasted long enough for artists to depict it accurately, and pokemon, no matter how divergent their evolutions, were almost always regarded by the people who built the Undersea Ruins as fundamentally being their original forms.


	26. Power Plant

It is often forgotten, in this era where it is virtually abandoned, that the Power Plant was not solely set up to provide _electric_ power; the Power Plant's builders had a far grander vision. Not only did they hope to light up Kanto and Johto, but also to provide a sufficient supply of power – or "energy" as it is more often known - for pokemon trainers across the region.

Lightning Pokemon, drawn by the immense supply of free electricity, soon flocked to the Power Plant, and this fact doomed its builders' plan to supply other forms of energy for pokemon battles. The places where the energy would be harvested became a virtual electric barrier as thick as a force field, impossible to harvest profitably. For this energy must first be separated out from far greater portions of electricity – and worse, it must be removed from a Power Plant that teemed with wild pokemon without being consumed in the process of driving them off.

Pokemon trainers today see the Power Plant primarily as a source of wild Lightning Pokemon and energy, and other kinds of pokemon are only brought there to help capture the locals. But those trainers who bring more than one type soon notice a curious quirk which dates back to the building's original design; any energy they bring of one type can be freely traded for another. In an era of monotype trainers, this quirk might be said to be of little relevance. Yet many trainers brought fighting pokemon and another type to the power plant and returned with Zapdos, and all of them would strongly disagree with this assessment.


	27. Ancient Ruins

The highest levels of Pokemon battles have been recently revolutionized by a plethora of remarkable trainer-side commands and techniques, typically named after the elite trainers or groups of trainers who pioneered them. These "supporters" require a good deal of time and concentration to execute, making it impossible to use more than one in a single turn, but their powerful effects are worth it.

Until the discovery of a series of Ancient Ruins in the Skyridge region, these effects were also thought to be novel. But the artistic and epigraphic evidence alike points to a shocking conclusion; although the "supporters" in question were named after different individuals than their modern descendants, the names are numerous and appear in contexts that are impossible to interpret any other way. In some part of the world, supporters are centuries old, and they were long forgotten – whether from civilizational collapse or strategic considerations – before their reinvention in Johto only a decade ago.

The sport of Pokemon, of course, has gone through many iterations around the world, and the modern ruleset was not formalized until centuries after the Ruins were abandoned. But there is one particular local variation in the rules which has become the subject of significant interest today: "Should any trainer be bereft of a supporter, and be willing to open their hands to their opponent, they are entitled on their turn to reach into their bag a second time." Many trainers, cursed by useless hands they lose nothing by revealing, have frustratedly wished this rule was included in the modern game, but the rules committee considers a reliance on blind draws to make the game even more dependent on luck; it continues to refuse their pleas.


	28. Mirage Stadium

It is said that there is an arena located somewhere in the desert – always wandering with the shifting sands – more dangerous than anything else around. Bandits track this arena looking for merchants and trainers to rob, and large desert pokemon such as Flygon do likewise, but they're only looking for food. Tales of old suggest that the Mirage Stadium represented every fear and danger inherent in desert crossings, condensed into a single place.

The nugget of truth behind this stadium of legend was simple enough; the mix of sand barriers and poor visibility made the Mirage Stadium extremely difficult to escape. But accounts from across the years vary on just _how_ difficult, and on just who was affected. Recent studies and expeditions supposedly conclude that only the active pokemon faces danger and even it can flee half the time, but this conclusion has not gone unquestioned.

The accounts of trainers losing all the pokemon they used in a battle or fleeing penniless with only their lives are too numerous and span too many centuries to discount as mere traveler's tales. Many historians are skeptical of the desert surveys' conclusions, and they have spared no effort in theorizing a way to reconcile these accounts with those from more recent times. The most popular theory is that there is more than one mirage stadium, and that the more dangerous stadia have simply not been found by desert surveys. Others have suggested that bandits from an era when pokemon battles were small-scale war were far crueler than any trainers today. Still more suggest that environmental changes have softened the stadium's trap and tamed an ancient horror.

Yet few trainers cross the desert even today without good maps of routes where the Mirage Stadium has not been sighted within the year.


	29. Mystery Zone

From the food they eat to the fuel that powers their lights and battles, humans and pokemon have long relied on the dead as an energy source; the laws of the universe allow no alternative. Admittedly, many grass pokemon are capable of acquiring energy from sunlight – but the sun itself is slowly burning out over billions of years, as all things must. And yet reports persist of a Mystery Zone where the very concept of entropy breaks down, for in this place evolved pokemon can create energy out of nothing.

Admittedly, pokemon evolution is itself hard enough to explain, much like life but on a far grander and more dramatic scale; pokemon evolution is an example of increased if short-lived complexity rarely found in the universe. And a few who claim to have seen Mystery Zone battles will note that evolved pokemon do not create this energy without sacrifice. But returning to the trainers' bag from the hand is not a sacrifice nearly on the scale of fainting or dying, and the shadow of a new form without the pokemon it evolves from merely takes up space.

In the Mystery Zone, energy is created not by sacrificing the past, but solely by delaying a potential future. It is a possibility which trainers of evolved pokemon gather from around the world to experience. It is also a possibility which scientists seek endlessly to understand, for if properly harnessed, it could infinitely extend the life of the universe. Perhaps they would understand it by now, if not for the fact that every instrument they attempt to use to monitor this phenomenon malfunctions the moment they sight the Mystery Zone!


	30. Underground Lake

There are a small number of cryptozoologists, rejected by the scientific community but often repeated in the press, who believe the Underground Lake is proof that Kabuto and Omanyte were never extinct to begin with; like Relicanth. In reality, geology clearly shows the lake formed during the early Eocene, millions of years after Omanyte disappear from the fossil record – and hundreds of millions of years after Kabuto. The truth about how a lake in the modern age came to fill up with revived fossil pokemon has often been obscured by the sort of people who believe in Missingno, but it is a tale worth telling of its own.

Kabuto and Omanyte are recent re-arrivals to the world of the living, but great numbers have been reanimated since the Cinnabar Laboratory made its discovery, and trainers the world over have taken to these ancient pokemon – and, sadly, quite a few have abandoned or predeceased them. There are very few places underwater in our world today which approximate the water and air conditions of Earth before the Chixculub impact, and the shells of fossil pokemon, forged in ancient times, do not stand up to over 65 million years of power creep.

Most Kabuto and Omanyte released into the wild do not last very long there. Those who did survive instinctively made their way to the Underground Lake, creating an ancient yet novel throwback of a community. Once their colony began to grow, caring yet overwhelmed trainers released their fossil pokemon in that same location. And for the first time in the Cenozoic era, in this strange lake which has converged with prehistory, Kabuto and Omanyte have been born not from fossils, from but eggs!


End file.
